Red Eye
by Bovineorbitor1
Summary: Struck blind by justice, he trips. Struck dumb by injustice, she sinks. Somehow, though, they never seem to fall together. Grimmhime
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

AN:Inspired by one of the ideas I came up with in my oneshots collection. The text in italics is taken from the oneshot, with some minor alterations, the rest is new.

Relentless rains

_Tousen has had a stroke of inspiration, although Grimmjow probably would not describe it in those terms. _

_And with respect to __Yamamoto sama, Aizen rather feels he's got the raw deal when it comes to thoughtful and obedient subordinates. _

Grimmjow doesn't realise at first. Tousen is in front of him, abrupt and self righteous, and then…not, with all the meaning that entails. And he doesn't realise.

_These two make an interesting tableau in their one frozen instant, before the blood starts to splatter, as it so often does, before Grimmjow howls his obscenities, as _he _so often does, before Tousen steps back, his words of justice marred by the faintest hint of smug satisfaction on his face. Aizen sighs. The moment before they played out their own characters was a more detailed study. _

When he does know, the world changes forever, one extended blink into eternity. Heat pours up and down his face, the flush of fury fighting the pallor of blood loss, while his ego drains out of the soles of his shoes.

_Intervention is now required. He does not intend to let the boat sway anymore than necessary, Grimmjow's injured pride notwithstanding. _

For half an instant, even as his mouth turns the air blue on autopilot, he thinks – I'm dead. Then, out of breath, he inhales.

And then he thinks – _He's_ dead. It is a thought far more comforting in its familiarity.

He moves forward.

"Grimmjow."

_Grimmjow – well, he considers Aizen's offer. It's something that Aizen has noticed about Arrancar. Life or Death…your choice. And they tend to think about it. But he turns and walks away, and the satisfaction is wiped from Tousen's face by the purely natural and somewhat non-violent means of time. _

_In the play of crime and punishment, they are not so different from Soul Society, just a little more direct._

He storms away in his own little huddle of thunder, trying not to acknowledge either pain or any emotion outside his carefully cultivated range.

Flat despair isn't anywhere on that scale, but still it pounds between his temples, noisy and building. Behind him, he can hear them talking in calm, flat voices, as though discussing changing the carpets.

Carpets in Heuco Mundo would be a bad idea, unless they were red.

_Tousen, though…_

"_Really, Kaname. What were you thinking?"_

_A movement in the manner of a shrug. He must be cultivating an imagination, which will certainly not be healthy for him. Nonetheless…_

_Aizen rises and walks away from his tall seat, slipping through the corridors that mirror his internal landscape, the default setting of his shiftless sword. He is absorbed in thought._

_He is grateful that he is not as literal as Tousen, that his own understanding of the world is shown through metaphors rather than based on them, that he doesn't get cold chills of significance every time he steps down from his throne. _

_But as far as ironic double meaning goes, he's quite sure that this won't work out in the way that Tousen intends. _

_1_

_1_

_1_

_Grimmjow runs out of patience before he reaches his linguistic limit, and those around him are spared his crudest epithets. _

Aizen considers, rather later, with one finger cocked up against his chin. He smiles too, as is entirely correct for a sadistic leader of his stamp.

_He brushes an angry hand over his face, clears away some of the stickiness congealing there. At least he doesn't have to plough through the idiots in the hallway; the other Arrancar can see enough of his mood to clear a wide space down the middle and keep their comments to themselves. _

The word runs through the Arrancar like a shockwave, and it has a similar effect, although Aizen has never seen a shockwave trigger this much sniggering. Luppi, the Sexta's replacement, grins the whole way through his induction with most unseemly glee, although Grimmjow, standing solitary at the back, doesn't see it. This is almost certainly just as well.

_The dam his soul has against hatred has never been anymore than a figment, the half memory of a time when some restraint was considered necessary, and as a purely human remnant it has little hope of holding. The waters build with silent, heavy anticipation, waiting to crash down on Tousen and his sudden, unexpected attempt at instruction. _

The man himself seems to wilt – not a fully fledged crumbling, or any reduction in self consequence, but the way he now moves more slowly in tacit acknowledgement, and doesn't stand up quite straight when he thinks no-one is looking. Aizen watches Grimmjow closest when the deposed Arrancar thinks he is unobserved; it provides a more amusing picture than frozen, stony pride.

It doesn't take long for Aizen to be watching all the time, because no-one else bothers. Hueco Mundo isn't big on care for casualties of war.

_Punishment had been inevitable. He isn't an idiot. But what has Grimmjow Jaggerjack to do with hesitance or doubt? _

_He'd been waiting for Aizen to punish him. _

_His master leaving his chastisement to another subordinate rankles hideously. That it was Tousen adds another layer, the figures leaping on the scale of humiliation. _

_The form that the punishment has taken tears through his thorn patch soul and touches on the quick, his acknowledgement of the ridiculous__. That is him now. A laughingstock. _

No-one actually dares to laugh to Grimmjow's face, not after the first time and the unfortunate incident which went with it. Still he lurks in dark corners, as though he fears that exposure to light means exposure to ridicule. Perhaps it does.

_You are blind to justice, Tousen had said. Bastard. Bastard. Freaking literal bastard. He can't even see the looks on their faces now. _

_Blood streams down his nose, his lips. It tastes bitter, salty, ugly. He spits it away, and hears the faintest hint of a smothered laugh. _

_In the absolute silence that comes –_now_-, everyone present can hear the faintest hint of a head striking the ground an instant before its body. _

Grimmjow, essentially, is not dealing well with being blind.

Aizen wonders, with vague interest, how this will affect his plans regarding the human girl, and her particular... gifts.

And if Gin hears laughter coming from his master's rooms late at night, well, he's used to it, and his own permanent smile doesn't dim one notch with curiosity.

Things would soon be happening, and when they did, they were sure to be _fun._

_Some vision of the world is caught within these eyes still._

_After all Tousen's intentions, though, he sees no justice, no guilt, no penance. There is nothing but the red. _

_Same as always, really. _

_1_

Time never did seem to come back into focus.

In fact, it slipped away from him in increasingly sticky clusters, as though fleeing the wrath that had most definitely already come.

Anger, or despair, had swallowed up his internal clock, and left him floating. It was a _novel _experience, but not one you'd write home about.

And Luppi needled, with what weapons fate and Tousen and time had handed him, and Grimmjow ground his teeth, chewing his pride into progressively smaller pieces in preparation for the swallow.

It hadn't come yet. Maybe it never would.

Time never did seem to come back into focus.

In this segment of the long blur, he was perched on one of those inexplicable white pillars that dotted Aizen's kingdom and conference rooms with a randomness that still felt regulated, strong evidence that their insanely powerful lord and master had been an interior decorator in another life.

He was listening without particularly attending, waiting for the part where they came to the point – Aizen always did this eventually, no matter how much he enjoyed plying his companions with small talk. The instant the word 'excursion' was thrown out there his ears came to attention; there was a debt seething down in the depths of his soul along with the anger, and it wanted a bloody annulment.

More words, less significant, flew by – "Distraction", "Specialised mission" – this for Ulquiorra – and finally what he'd been waiting for, finally "Kurosaki," with "and friends" tacked on as an uncaring afterthought.

Somewhere between the surging mass of excitement and fury and the quieter, slower moving paralysis of desolation his blood ran hot and cold, torn on a needlepoint of Luppi's name being called, but not his, not his, and then silence. Kurosaki faded back into the line up of grudges, unreachable.

He swore he'd see his way eventually.

1

Things happen, some of them involving a highly battered Luppi - a bonus, always -, some of them hanging around a bright headed, innocent little girl, far, far from home. At first, he only cared about the Luppi bit.

Now, standing at the back of bustling, excited crowd, Grimmjow felt something like interest revive. He grabbed a runtish hollow by its skinny neck and squeezed just enough to let it know his _exact_ mood, and it winced but didn't dare to squeal - wise move. Grimmjow didn't like noisy prey.

The Ex-Espada glared. The glare was excellent for its type, and not wholly ruined by the fact that it was directed a foot above its victim's head.

"What's going on?" he snarled. The snarl, too, was impressive. He clutched the stiffening of his little hollow like a security blanket, reminding himself that he was still one scary bastard.

The hollow, who agreed, gabbled an explanation of fairytale proportions, of time turning and magic princesses, but it was the last lame sentence that set fire to his mind – _she can heal things. _Out of verbosity, the mini-hollow trailed to a halt, aware that its audience's attention had drifted.

She can heal things.

He flung his victim away, pushing through the crowd in the general direction of the new reiatsu as it pulsed like a beacon in his mind.

She could heal things, could she?

He heard Luppi complaining as though through a dreamlike filter- for himself, he didn't much care if she was a god or not as long as she could do one thing. Just one thing.

"Now, that's right. Orihime, in order to test your abilities…I'd like you to heal... one of our members."

There was some significance in that, wasn't there? He fought off a feral grin, trying not to seem too eager, too desperate.

He stopped, now at the front of the line, and froze. He could feel her now, this princess, her garishly bright light reflected off his skin. He could have sworn that it focused on him, her reiatsu, for just long enough to make him feel sick to the stomach with a cocktail of disgust and eagerness and want.

Aizen's voice swelled again, some ancient joke in the cadence.

"Luppi."

1

AN: Alright, second Grimmhime begun, and already it hates me.

I'm going for a darker angle with this one, I hope you liked it so far. Because I'm more busy with school this year, updates will be less frequent than with my last story, and as my sister, who helps me read though my stories for error, has gone to uni, there may be some more glaringly obvious screw ups in the content. Feel free to tell me about improvements that could be made.


	2. Dreameater

Disclaimer: I own neither the characters nor most of the settings in this story.

AN: Special thanks to Walis, for very encouraging reviews here and elsewhere. I did attempt to use review reply to thank you, but I think the internetz ate it.

1

_Too small and too weak to run, too small and weak not to want to. _

_She wasn't anywhere exactly, nowhere that she knew, except that the nowhere where she was was blindingly white and huge. There were no visible walls but there had to be a floor because she had to be lying on something. _

_Pockets of dark blurred and twisted in the light, throwing off her sense of dimension. They receded while approaching, getting smaller and smaller until they stopped just short of where she presumably lay and waited. They were still more massive than she was, but the thousands of thin reflections had run together, sliding down to two shapes of concentrated blackness. _

_Get up, one said. _

_Get up, said the other. Move, shift, graduate. Wither. _

_She stayed still with the terror dewed stillness of a frozen rabbit. Get up. Get up. She wanted their voices to rise in volume because that was how her brother reacted when he was angry, that was real, but they only seemed to get quieter and blacker. She was breathing and she was shaking, but otherwise she couldn't stir. _

_A shadow hand pawed at her briefly, light and evanescent. Tears drizzled slowly from her eyes and pooled on the floor, reflecting the shapes. _

"_Orihime! Orihime, wake up!" Solid warmth and reality wrapped around her shoulders, courtesy of her brother's arm. She leaned her head against it and trembled, shaking too hard for one tiny body. He lifted her into his lap, stroked her hair comfortingly, and she had time to be grateful that neither her sheets nor her room lacked colour. _

"_Dreaming about Mum and Dad again?" he asked gently, not letting up on his ministrations, which was just as well. She nodded into his shoulder. _

"_It's okay. I won't let them hurt you. I promise. I won't let anyone hurt you." _

_He is her knight. She smiles up at him gratefully, gap toothed and watery eyed and in his eyes adorable. He ruffles her hair and starts to tell her a story which will stand guardian over that too-vivid imagination of hers until the sunshine does it for him. _

_He is the very best knight in shining armour for her, because when he says he'll keep her safe she knows he's telling the truth; he's already saved her from the monsters of reality once and he fights off the dreams waiting under the bed almost every night. If life were like a story, she muses, they'd live together in a palace and she'd have a white horse – no, not white, a yellow horse, she likes yellow better – and everyone would know that he was a hero. _

_She drifts off, play pretending that life is a story and that she is in the middle of training her horse Buttercup to fetch. _

_1_

She woke up to the sure knowledge that she had been dreaming. Dreaming, moreover, about a dream. And if, as one philosophical teacher had once commented, life itself was nothing but a dream, then that would make the experience she had just had a dream within a dream within a dream, which was wonderfully Zen. Kinda like those eternity mirrors, except that dreams were vastly superior to mirrors in terms of foggy mystery.

Her brother had told her once – strangeness upon stangeness that his name was no longer an ache in her mind, a grave stumbled over many times inexplicably smoothed away to unblemished turf – that dreaming about dreaming was a special occurrence which happened only before great change, and you had to –

"Make a wish!" she declared, trying to sit up triumphantly and only managing a tumble off the unfamiliar bed onto the cold, cold floor.

She lay there for a few seconds, cold and remembering and wishless. Then, breathing in one long stream of chill air and courage, she made two.

I wish somebody would save me, and

I wish I could save myself.

1

When he closes his eyes – a concession, but not to anything in particular – when he does that, he thinks he can hear it.

He can't trace it, or define it, but he can hear – _something, _something which ought to be irritating but isn't.

He spends his spare moments wondering about it. He spends a lot of time wondering. Sometimes he manages to _not be angry _for longer than ten minutes, because it is distracting.

It makes him curious, although the feeling comes without any energy to drive it forward.

1

After a while, her thinking came around to him. It took the long route, going by way of wishes and dreams and whether or not Kurosaki-kun and the others would rescue her, whether she wanted them to, but it came to him eventually. She shivered.

He scared her.

True enough, everything here scared her, to the point where she wasn't sure exactly where the cheerful and heedless Inoue Orihime had run off to. That Luppi person scared her too. Aizen certainly did, but then she had the shrewd suspicion that Aizen was the kind of person who really ought to be feared, at all times, in all circumstances. Even if he were to take up doing the hula in a neon pink apron while serving his beloved tea – Inoue had known at the instant of seeing him that he was the kind of person who really liked tea – he should still be treated with circumspection and suspicion, even paranoia. He was that kind of bad guy.

The blind man was a little different. His kind of fear was sharp, even anxious, not the despairing throbbing which currently corroded her soul.

Cold fear, but not frozen through.

That was her first impression of the way he felt. She was usually quite accurate with this kind of thing.

On the other hand, maybe telling him so hadn't been such a good idea.

1

The collision had come at the third corner he turned.

She was oddly warm. It was the first impression he'd got.

Truth be told, he could have avoided her easily. Truth be told more completely, he'd gone that way hoping to smash into Luppi and pass it off as an accident, thus triggering the inevitable fight. After tearing the little bastard's heart out – possibly his entrails too – he could get their new guest to heal his eyes and restore his position in one neat manoeuvre.

Stupid, possibly, but it sure as hell was badass. And Aizen, for all his calculating power, seemed to like badass. How else could one explain the grand exit from Soul Society – and the hair gel? Maybe it amused him. He was almost certainly expecting something of the kind anyway, or else he wouldn't give Luppi escort duty.

Maybe that was why. Grimmjow had never cared for puppet shows.

Instead he'd come to an abrupt halt in the middle of the corridor and left her walk smack bang into him, warmth and all.

It was like being kicked in the teeth.

Not the impact, of course, that was a mere fraction of nothingness. No, it was _her. _

Pleasantly bouncy, oddly warm, a flurry of terrified apologies. Obscene with it all.

He couldn't pin down precisely what it was about her, but the feeling was vivid as a knife even hours later.

She hadn't exactly helped her case by opening her mouth and talking. In great quantity. Even Luppi, who enjoyed yapping, was awed to silence by the presence of a master.

"Ah, I'm so sorry! So sorry! Ah, I'm such a klutz! Did I hurt you? Oh, no, of course not! Er…aren't you cold?"

The standard response in this situation, _shut up_, didn't seem adequate. A cero wouldn't go down too well either.

He said: "No."

"You feel cold."

He had just about managed a _whatever,_ and slid on by without raising any particular hell.

Strange.

1

1

1

AN: Strange is indeed the name of the game. There are a few points which are going to be important later on tucked away here in what appears to be quite an actionless (not to mention sadly short) chapter, and I will warn you that it is likely to be more fantastical than I would normally write a Bleach fic. Any virulent haters of shamelessly magicy (as opposed to sword swinging shinigami) fantasy, beware, here there (probably won't) be dragons. I was in the mood for a challenge when this plot bunny savaged me, I think.

Please review. I know you're out there… I can hear you breathing.


	3. Loop

_Disclaimer: I disclaim. Generally. _

_Note: Anything past 'Turn back the Pendulum' is disregarded here. _

_1_

_It is warm. _

_A little too warm, maybe, but you're sitting in a breeze and it protects you from the worst of the discomfort. The sky above you is vast and slow moving, just dawdling along on its business as all the skies of your childhood have. A lumbering mammoth of an evening eventually dislodges the afternoon, but the translation is too slow to be noticeable. You don't realise how long the two of you have been sitting here, not exactly waiting for anything, until the heavens are suddenly voluble with golden light and tell you that time has not stopped despite your absentmindedness. The light, still talking, reflects in the river below you. _

_You are suddenly, startlingly conscious of being very, very happy. This knowledge hovers in the air around you, lovingly preserving the moment as, in memory, it turns amber. _

_Sora turns to look at you and you are delighted to see contentment on his face, making him look years younger and free. He laughs a little and sits down at your side, slinging an arm around your thin shoulders._

"_Did you have fun, Orihime?" He doesn't need an answer; your face says it all. "The fireworks start soon." _

_You are perfectly happy to wait, as you did the year before and the one before that. It seems that a great proportion of your life has been spent with Sora at the riverbank, waiting for the fireworks to start. _

_The breeze picks up, still lazy. _

_A dragonfly breezes past your ear, possibly summoned by these thoughts of tradition; in keeping with the finest, you start and begin to scramble after it and Sora merely extends a finger leisurely. Sure as clockwork, the dragonfly zooms down to perch daintily on the tip. It has the attitude of one conferring a favour. _

"_What?" he laughs at the look of awe he receives. Every time. Every time. _

"_How do you do that?" _

"_Magic." _

_Despite the wink that accompanies this, you believe it absolutely. Every time. _

_And then the first of the fireworks rises and bursts into sky fragments, and_

you

wake

up.

To coldness, and darkness, and moonlight on your tear tracks.

1

Gin found his lord and master standing idly, an appropriately dark figure stranded against the window, and frowning.

It didn't bother him. Aizen's facial expressions were slightly more flexible than his own, but equally impenetrable, and a fashionable frown was _the _look for the thinking Tyrant these days.

And then his voice came, and the strangeness came a little more distinctly with it:

"Did you feel it?"

"Huh?" he responded. Though both puzzled and expectant, his voice emerged cocky and unperturbed, slightly mocking. Perhaps that meant that the odd note in Aizen's question was isolated and irrelevant, unreflective of any inner turmoil. Perhaps.

"Inoue Orihime. Did you feel her do anything…unexpected?"

"Uh…" The true answer was _No._ He didn't like blatant displays of ignorance, however.

"It took." Aizen now was entirely cryptic, talking almost to himself. "I think…I've made a mistake."

Gin froze. His eyes half opened, moving rapidly over his leader's face, then retreated back under their lids as though startled by what they found there.

"Was that an honest mistake, or a screw with the heads of my subjects mistake?" he asked suspiciously. Aizen's lips twitched out of their downward trend for the first time.

"A genuine mistake…Though perhaps not an honest one." He looked up. "We shall have to delay some things, and move up others."

That sounded ominous.

Gin's grin doubled. The ominouser the better, as far as he was concerned.

1

Before -

1

Grimmjow did not wake up to screaming.

This failed to register with him at first. He slid out of darkness to a high pitched, rapid voice booming in his ears, and didn't bother to discriminate.

He had bounded up from the place on the floor he had selected to sulk in last night and was on his feet with his sword drawn before his spirit sense told him that there was no-one there, no one to savage or maim or become desperately needed stress relief. The next appropriate response was not so clear.

Something told him to stand still and _listen_: let the words and the meanings condense against his patience and run down into clarity. To work things out first.

He ignored this something, opting instead to blunder around the room, clawing the air for whichever insolent whomsoever it was that had managed to conceal their presence while sneaking into his.

He came up empty, and _then_ he listened, out of necessity.

"-Why it's so roomy in here. I've never even been in a _guest_ bedroom so big. He should probably have put me in a dungeon instead. Oh well. I guess if you're a villain, you get to make up your own rules."

Oh. _That_ whomever.

But there was no way in hell that she was actually in his room. If he was Noitora, he would have looked disappointed at that thought, but as he was not, he merely looked both confused and irritated. Her voice chattered on in his ear, discussing various inanities, then fuzzed out as he jerked his head, fuzzed to something else- a faint hissing, like sand sliding over the dunes outside – and then another voice, much deeper, much more level.

"It took. I think…I've made a mistake."

Grimmjow's smile would have doubled at this unexpected revelation had he been wearing one previously. He produced one instead, all teeth and curiosity, and it did indeed broaden as Aizen continued.

It was only after the silence dropped back, like the curtain at the end of the show, that he tried to think about what was happening.

And _then_ he thought – If you're a villain, you get to make up your own rules? Like _hell. _

1

Before.

1

It was perhaps her own fault. She had been the one to start thinking about cold. And now she was, terribly, and in complete absence of the mittens and scarves and playfulness she was used to using as layers against the winter chill. She shivered, and huddled further into herself.

Another problem, perhaps even more problematic, was that she was bored. Really. True, she was also still flat out terrified, but this seemed to have been so much a constant state for her recently that it hardly counted, and made things no more interesting than they would otherwise be. Orihime thought that this was very unfair. If she had to be kidnapped by an evil megalomaniac she thought that she at least ought to find the experience interesting. Instead, she was getting an interminable education in what it was like being grounded.

She tried humming softly to herself to improve the vibe and atmosphere of her new bedroom, but her quiet song just made the silence seem bigger: bigger than her voice, bigger than her power to oppose, bigger than her person. She dwindled even further, lifting her knees up to support her chin and closing her eyes.

She felt guilty and inadequate. She felt terribly, terribly small.

She wanted to fight it.

She wanted to be daring and powerful and subversive, to undermine Aizen's reign from under his nose, but here and now she would settle for standing up against the oppression of his colour scheme and lack of central heating.

"This place is very boring," she said aloud, daring the walls to argue. "I wonder if the Hollows get tired of it too. Maybe they're too scared to tell Aizen that they'd actually like TVs and wallpaper and stuff. Maybe Aizen is trying to make an Artistic Statement. It's very modern."

She paused to see how this was received. Maybe her room was being watched, although she couldn't see any cameras, and no one had descended from on high to tell her to shut up, like that Luppi had yesterday when she'd told him that she liked his haircut. She'd liked the blind Arrancar's 'whatever' a bit better, but not much. No-one was very polite here, except Aizen, and that was worst of all.

The blind guy had pulled a face just before saying 'whatever' in that quelling voice which had been almost funny, only the huge scar crossing out his eyes had made it also slightly horrifying. She didn't like to think what kind of thing had happened to him to cause that, because it reminded her of where she was and what the people were like there and how much trouble she really was in, and then she got almost too scared to speak…

"This is the biggest bedroom I've ever been in," she said defiantly. "I don't know why it's so roomy in here. I've never even been in a _guest_ bedroom so big. He should probably have put me in a dungeon instead. Oh well. I guess if you're a villain, you get to make up your own rules."

This was possibly the only thing she had in common with a standard issue villain, although she hadn't noticed yet.

1

Before

1

She's dreaming.

Inside. Voices. They ask:

-what are we going to do?-

and

-did you feel it?-

and

and they answer

-of course we did, dumbass, we were right here-

ask

-what are we going to do?-

answer

-…I don't know.-

ask

-_was it us?_-

and

-what are _they_ going to do?-

and, less urgently

-does she know?-

-how could we know if she doesn't?-

-_do_ we know?-

-I felt something happen.-

-She's not supposed to use it like that. It's too big for us. Too big for her. It's dangerous.-

-what do we do?-

-we knew something like it could happen. Ever since the first time –

-that was different. That was _different_. Anyway, that was before…us.-

-knew all along...-

-Damn it!-

-Don't swear, Tsubaki.-

They feel the cold come.

1

AN: I'm very sorry for the wait. My computer died on me, then there were exams...and so on. Added to that, I've sort of slipped out of the Bleach fandom. I'll stick around for this pairing and I'm still interested in the characters, but I'm way behind on chapters and there's not much to jog me into writing here. I will finish this story and probably continue to write Grimmhime, but they are increasingly likely to be AU.

Also sorry for the lack of action here, there should be some next chapter.


	4. Arrange

Chapter 4:

_Grimmjow didn't greatly appreciate dreams._

_His lack of appreciation was ferocious enough to discourage them from visiting him often, and memories, which were in fairly short supply in hollow existence anyway, got a similar reception. _

_There were a few exceptions, of course, in his savage indifference; some recollections had risen like landmarks in a vast emptiness - angry, proud; impossible to ignore. It was by these that he navigated, but increasingly since the loss of his sight they were crumbling into the mists. _

_This did nothing to improve his temper, or his attitude towards intangibles. _

_What he disliked most intensely, however, were those indecisive dreams with all of the earmarks of memory, and it was one such which was now encompassing him._

_It was dark. It was always dark in these dreams and it was always cold. He could see his breath misting up past his eyes in sparse, chilly plumes, and the dream state didn't prevent a sharp pang of angry loss at the knowledge -memory- that this was fantasy: the plumes were the only things at first which differed from his waking state. He had vast supplies of both dark and cold in that, but no sight. _

_He was walking somewhere, without knowing where he was currently or where he was going; walking with a conviction which aggravated his passenger mind as it struggled uselessly to take control. Eventually it gave up and pretended apathy. It seemed a long time of struggle for little distance covered._

_As he walked it struck him that there were more obstacles in his way than could reasonably occur for an Espada, or even an extremely reluctant Ex-Espada. His path seemed to take him through every possible protrusion and barrier, each slightly misshapen in its own way and each glowing faintly. He could not blast his way through, which was simply evidence of the dreamworld's conspiracy to make everything as complicated and illogical as possible. They weren't even real objects, not made of rock or flesh or anything which noticed when he aimed a vicious sideways kick at it mid pace. His walking never allowed him to make closer investigations. _

_It was some time – or very little – after he had decided that soon he would wake up, that he came across what had apparently been his object. He halted, hands in pockets, and looked at it with an odd and quite alien sensation of satisfaction. It was in many ways similar to the things he had been circumventing, except that where they had glowed faintly in all sorts of sickly spectrums, this one blazed golden light in a wide halo. It had vigour. It had attitude. It was no more explicable than anything else in this dream which felt like a memory but which was like no memory he remembered from the first time round, but he found that he was quite happy with it. _

The dream fuzzed at the edges and disintegrated.

Any and all happiness quickly receded. Firstly, without the mindbending influence of whatever it was that he had just experienced, Grimmjow's normal state was not a cheery one. Secondly, waking to find himself standing aimlessly in what he, upon investigation, determined was one of the many corridors in Las Noches was not a recipe for producing gratification, and thirdly, he could definitely detect the dulcet tones and familiar reiatsu of his lord and master just around the corner. Nobody wants to encounter their boss immediately upon waking up. He sincerely hoped he was not about to form another landmark memory.

It was no good attempting to go back now. He shoved his hands defiantly in his pockets and turned the corner with as much swagger as he could muster in his confusion, but perhaps it was fortunate that he was moving with slight uncertainty because he came immediately up against a door. He stopped just in time and bounced back, blinking uselessly.

Where exactly was he?

"Ah, Grimmjow." The warm, rich voice emerged from the door, sounding as ever mildly amused. He forced his hackles down and forced out the expected rejoinder,

"Yes, sir?"

"Come in, would you?"

He fumbled past the door and entered as nonchalantly as he dared.

"There's no hurry, Grimmjow." The voice sounded even more warmly amused. Grimmjow bit the inside of his cheek and snapped the door behind him. He continued forward towards Aizen's reiatsu and almost tripped over the limp form on the floor, which stirred and groaned. He gave it a sightless but still passably haughty stare. Undeterred, it groped feebly at his foot.

"Grimmjow." Aizen again, presumably reacting to the spike in his subordinate's energy. "This is Inoue Orihime. I would like you to escort her back to her room."

Grimmjow prodded Orihime absently with his heel, trying to think. She moaned and flinched away.

There were a whole host of questions and objections that arose as viable responses to Aizen's request – no, order - and he was a little startled to find that the foremost one was,

"What have you done to her?"

It was a fair question. Aizen's reiatsu always made sensing spirit matter somewhat difficult, something like trying to hear underwater, but even now that he was literally standing on the girl her soul produced barely a flicker of energy. He was fairly certain that since Tousen's disciplinary measures his other senses had been compensating, hence the hit and run hearing of the other day, but even for his newly acute detection she was barely registering. She seemed, in fact, almost dead. It was a huge change from the first time he'd encountered her.

He couldn't help but feel a certain amount of professional curiosity over what exactly had been done, but more prominent was his own vested interest. She'd be no good to him like this.

"Inoue has been helping us re-enforce our defences," said Aizen, as though this answered the question. "She is a little tired out. Please take her back to her quarters."

"Yes, sir," he said stiffly and bent to seize a handful of the girl's clothes. He heaved her over one shoulder, turned on his heel and marched back towards the corridor.

"Grimmjow." He stopped. If he never heard his name articulated with companionable cheer again, he thought, it would still be too often. Never sleepwalking into mystery would be good too, of course.

"Yeah?"

"Orihime is a valued guest. I would like her returned to her room intact, please."

He didn't dignify that with a response, but he felt her shiver against his shoulder. Apparently the valued guest was none too sure of her future prospects. Understandable, he thought. It was something that he was beginning to understand a little too well.

1

Orihime was beginning to realise the value of being careful what you wished for. Her looked for action had come with a speed and brutality that had left her trembling in its wake, and she was afraid, now, to want anything, even the slight comfort of being returned – intact – to her room.

Distantly she heard the rumble of her blind Arrancar's voice, slightly incredulous and more than slightly resentful.

"From the feel of you, Aizen definitely doesn't follow his own advice." She craned her neck to look into his face as he muttered this, surprised by the lack of reverence, but her angle was awkward and she couldn't make out any expression. Even the slight effort drained her and she drooped limply like an uprooted flower, roots torn and smarting.

Her Arrancar was apparently not an enthusiastic botanist. He shrugged her up irritably so that her head banged off his chest and set off at a pace which rattled her teeth. There was an uncomfortable period of silence in which she tried to keep her mind blank and her stomach settled, and she was taken off guard when he broke it.

"So what exactly did he do to you, woman?"

It was a direction she knew she did not want to go in, but her thoughts flooded backwards as if eager or drawn down by gravity, creating a maelstrom of emotion which kept her mute. Her Arrancar made an impatient gesture. She realised that he was not going to accept being ignored, nor would he respect her finer feelings.

"He…" she faltered, remembering. The Arrancar took her hesitation as an encore for his previous gesture.

"Well?"

"He put images in my head," she said, as steadily as she could. "Of what would happen if… if my friends tried to rescue me. And…and he told me to use my powers to m-make barriers to keep them out of Hueco Mundo." But I don't think I did it properly, she thought. And he didn't say 'keep them out'. He said 'delay them'. And I don't think that Aizen cares what happens to my friends, so there must be something else.

An image from one of the visions rose suddenly before her eyes and she fought off nausea. _They can't come for me. They can't. _

"Permanent barriers over all Hueco Mundo?" The blind Arrancar sounded sceptical too, and out of the corner of her eye she saw his frown deepen, but he seemed to shake it off. "That's it?"

It felt like quite a lot at the time, she wanted to say, but she didn't think that would go down terribly well so she just nodded. He muttered something she couldn't quite make out and looked like he was going to ask another question, but then paused and stopped.

"You're in the fifth room down this corridor, right?"

Inoue had really no idea, but he sounded certain so she nodded encouragingly. The Arrancar retraced his steps to the start of the corridor and then ran one hand along the wall, counting each doorway as he paced forward. He ascertained what she had seen immediately after nodding; there were only four doors. This seemed to stump him, but he did not attempt to count again.

"Maybe we're in the wrong corridor?" she offered timidly, guessing as she did so that any attempt to help in the circumstances was highly unwise. But the Arrancar seemed too puzzled to be annoyed.

"Can't be. You're placed near Ulquiorra so he can play nursemaid." He glanced at her, presumably out of habit. "I can sense your reiatsu from my place." This sounded almost like an accusation, but it was all delivered in tones of absolute conviction and she couldn't help but wonder if this place was really alive and moving. Her Arrancar backed away and, quite casually, blew a hole in the wall where the absence of door had so perplexed him. He leaned in. Despite the new provision of entrance, there was a continued absence of room.

"The hell?" he muttered. Orihime was beginning to feel similarly and she seized upon the confusion as a welcome distraction.

"Maybe it moved?" she said. The Arrancar looked like he wanted to be disparaging about this idea, but his exploration seemed to have forced him to a similar conclusion. This was more the kind of excitement she enjoyed. Chasing an escaping room down sounded like fun and if she'd been in any other place she would have been very cheerful about it.

"Aizen," the Arrancar said abruptly, shifting her weight irritably across his shoulder.

"Huh?"

"Aizen! Probably his idea of a $&%"!* game."

He pulled her off his shoulder onto the floor.

"You can walk now, yeah?"

"Uh, yes," she said. He grunted.

"Come on, then."

And so they went. At first Orihime was a little surprised by the relative lack of aggression in her companion but she quickly came to the conclusion that he was directing all of his energy into a huge, ever growing reservoir of hatred for his leader. From the standpoint of an aspiring subversive element it was interesting to discover that not all of the hollows appreciated Aizen's authority; from the point of view of an unprotected young woman surrounded by antagonism, it was pleasant to be treated in what was only a neutral manner. After a while she started to think that since she was in a temporary alliance with him over room hunting, it was only polite to get his name.

"What's your name?" she asked, taking the direct approach. He gave her another habit glance which landed quite accurately on her face. She winced, for a moment seeing clearly the angry scars stretching around opaque eyes; half healed tissue reddened and swollen, the eyes themselves oddly undamaged except for the mistiness masking them.

And as though looking into them really did give insight deeper than it would otherwise have been, she saw far more than he willingly gave her. Saw the roiling fury in him, the hideous emptiness and the reaching need, she saw the desperation blunted by pride, and she felt…not pity; he would have known that, he would have known and never forgiven her. Not pity. Horror, and sorrow, and an empathy which was as unfamiliar to her as her situation but was born and maturing while she was realising that in their different ways they were trapped just the same. All of this, in the instant before he told her his name.

"Grimmjow," he said.

"Oh," she said. Oh.

1

The woman's voice sounded oddly threadbare, and more shocked than a relatively unloaded answer deserved. He was fairly sure he'd kept the tide of frustration out of his voice as he told her his name, unadorned by any trappings such as 'Sexta', or 'Espada'. Perhaps she'd heard of him. Yeah, maybe one of the others had said something. Freakin' Luppi, maybe. No, Luppi or one of the others would have made it ridiculous, would have mocked him. Chick sounded slightly intimidated. Or – maybe the Kurosaki brat had mentioned the name. That could be it.

Was she afraid now? He could live with that. Oh yeah. Made forcing her to do his eyes at some stage all the less troublesome. But then –

"Grimmjow?"

The way she said it was refreshingly lacking in comradely cheer. But it wasn't terror either. He couldn't determine what it was.

"What?"

"Um," she started, not promisingly. There was a slightly longer pause than was normal even from what he'd observed in her, then she said in a different tone, "Was that staircase there before?"

"Huh?"

He turned and inspected. There was definitely a steep spiral staircase in the middle of the corridor which equally definitely had not been there before. He ran a hand over the banister. His arm dropped back to his side. Bewilderment pushed its thorns against his already agitated temper.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"Is it normally like this?" asked the woman, sounding mildly interested. He pushed his hand through his hair.

"No!"

"Maybe we should ask for directions."

Considering the amount of time they'd been wandering, that was probably the logical thing to do. He continued to push his fingers rather painfully against his scalp, resisting logic. He could image what the rumour would be as it ran up the ranks, progress marked by contemptuous snickers, getting higher and higher until it reached the seat of Aizen's throne. And Aizen would smile. Poor Grimmjow. No longer capable of the most minuscule of tasks. Such a pity.

No. Damned if he would be defeated by architecture. Damned if he would be defeated by Tousen's bloody instructive attempt. And, since Aizen was probably spying on the progress of his latest mind game, he wasn't going to show how much this useless wondering and the company of his potentially very useful indeed companion was getting to him. He'd deliver her to her room, retire to his, and refrain from having any further confusing dreams, staircases or no damn staircases.

"Let's go." He delivered that, at least, with finality, and mercifully she didn't object. They went on.

Las Noches was not built for ease of navigation at the best of times, and everything tended to look the same. If things really were rearranging, he thought dismally after what felt like the hundredth corridor with too many rooms, or not enough, or rooms arranged differently, or fully occupied rooms, then at least everyone else would be suffering too. He refused to stop and verify his suspicions, though. The day had been just weird enough to have raised the possibility that he was on the brink of losing it. He didn't want to advertise the fact, regardless his conscious conviction that _he_ was fine; it was the rest of the universe which had the trouble.

The woman was being surprisingly uncomplaining. Most of her unobtrusiveness was probably his distracted state of mind, but some part of his consciousness had been trained on her the whole time and it was grudgingly appreciative. She'd been quiet too, which was probably nerves and whatever Aizen had done, but was convenient all the same. Now she was flagging, trailing behind him and, from the uneven footfalls, trying not to limp.

"I hope we find it soon," she said. He could hear irregular bumping noises as if she were hopping on one foot. He wondered if 'with blisters' still counted as 'intact', and was considering tossing her back over his shoulder when all footsteps halted and she said:

"Is that it?"

The hopping resumed and a door swung ponderously open, banging against the wall.

"Oh, I think it is!" she declared happily. He grunted with some satisfaction. Finally.

Oddly convenient timing, though…

"Grimmjow?" She used the same tone as before. As before, he was puzzled by it.

"What?"

"Would you like me to heal your eyes?"

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AN: Mwahahaha...

Ack. This chapter kept going in various unexpected directions and I had to rewrite bits or the story would have been resolved way too quickly! I'm guessing from the reviews (thank you all again) that most of my readers are quite confused at this point. I'm also guessing that this chapter won't help much. Don't worry, everything should eventually make sense (Even if it's still weird).

Anyway, I'm not too sure about the quality of the chapter, but I'm terrible at holding onto something once it's written. I hope you all enjoy it anyway.


	5. turn and face the strange

Disclaimer: I fully confess to failing too much to own anything.

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"Would you like me to heal your eyes?"

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_Dreams. Every night now, the dreams, providing the story threads in what has been a careful dance or a careless war between change and sameness. She tries to cling to them, slips off scared sometimes, sometimes falls right in. _

_Often she dreams of the princess in the tower, waiting handkerchief in hand for something which refuses to resolve itself at long last into someone, anyone, and keeps on coming and coming and not arriving. Other times she is saving the world from aliens._

_Invariably she wakes up before she is rescued or taken to anybody's leader. _

_This aggravates her slightly, the lack of closure offending her sense of narrative, but even endless and incomplete fantasies are preferable to the alternatives. They come up occasionally, whether or not she is asleep, and are – _

_-Ichigo falling through space, crimson - his hands and his throat - the fingers trying to hold on to the flow, like a child with jam coloured stains all over clothes and face and the floor now, spreading. Bone crops up in unexpected places. White and red, sharp as splinters, erupting out of black cloth and skin with still some traces of peach and pink and tan but not human, not anymore. Rukia's smooth dark hair no longer smooth but tangled and sticky, eyes still open and life just putting the finishing touches on its signature as it departs. Her body lying separate some distance away, half eaten. Ishida – but she can't look, not any more, and can't wake up, can't – _

She's not asleep. She presses her fingers into her eyes, wishing that she were blind like him.

Oh yes, it's a tangent and she is good at being diverted, as though her mind is always at a crossroads and she can jump from car to car, or horse to horse depending on the fantasy time period. It's reckless and dangerous and she falls often but she jumps anyway. She leaps onto that train of thought.

It takes her straight to him.

Grimmjow. He has been drawing down many of the threads of her time keeping story, yet seeming almost as tangled as she is, not nearly as terrible as Aizen the puppet master. There is – yes, that is gratitude, wildly out of place as it is, and then a thin line of sweat trickles down her neck as she remembers the look on his face after her offer and she looks quickly up and out the window, bites her lip. Thinks of terror. And it's just as well she is sitting, or else even in her quiet little corner of colourlessness she would take a step back.

_His expression, so conflicted that the intensity of the conflict seemed to fill the air around them even though her ability to sense __reiatsu__ is not precise and he had not yet lost control – _

_1_

Dreams. He hates them. Especially the nonsensical ones, the ones with no bearing on anything. Dreams and memories. He sits now on his bed with his knees curled up and his fingers tapping impatiently, tap tap, tap tap. He remembers the guileless tone of her voice, the strange note ringing in it so strongly that for a moment he hadn't even registered the words.

"Would you like me to heal your eyes?"

And then, _and then_, the thoughts so fast and thick that none of them quite made coherent sense, and rush of _want _so sudden that he felt dizzy and sick with it. Behind it, suspicion. The animal inside him was eternally wary of traps, and this smelt like one. It smelt like one of Aizen's games.

He remembers the clench of his fists, so disconnected from his centre at that moment of raging intensity and so close now that the action repeats itself involuntarily, fingernails pinching at the skin of his palms.

All that internal conflict – he hated that. Had always tried to avoid it, happy to externalise in straight lines. Fate, it seemed, had other plans.

Fate be damned.

(Maybe this defiance, too, was a kind of dreaming. He didn't want to think about that, so he didn't.)

He _knew_ it was a trap. Had known. Had been sure Aizen had put her up to it, because why would she volunteer her services so easily, otherwise? It made no sense.

Had stood there opening his mouth to say _Do it _anyway, _Do it, _withmaybe a little throttling thrown in to compensate for feeling like a puppet fulfilling its function –

and then _Ulquiorra _had walked into the hall with such impeccable timing that even Grimmjow was robbed of invective, as much of a feat as that was. So much so, in fact, that even now he can't think of a curse strong enough to attach to the fourth Espada's name, merely thinks -

_Ulquiorra_

_-_again with venom, swears vengeance.

Should have sensed him coming. Hadn't. Hasn't thought about why not yet. He temporises a little thinking again through his vocabulary, but can only find one other name he associates more with hatred.

He stands abruptly and turns to pacing, repeating the same route over and over in the confined space of his room, a path well nigh engraved into the floor by now. One hand rises absently to rub against his eyes, grating across the scar tissue in another familiar passing. Anger burns at the back of his throat but for now he holds it down.

1

_Ulquiorra spoke before Grimmjow had registered his presence, his tone cool but without the barely discernable rasp of irony which seemed to signal his victories, whenever he chose to acknowledge them. _

"_What are you doing?" he asked. _

_Grimmjow said nothing. Fortunately, Orihime was skilled enough in this department to make up for his deficiency, and she declared:_

"_We were room hunting!" - with bizarre enthusiasm and just the faintest hint of nervousness. She made it sound like the plot to an adventure novel. He worked on holding down his snarl. _

_Ulquiorra's silence seemed as close to perturbed as it could get._

"_Escort duty," Grimmjow grunted finally, and tried to stride on past. A thin hand flashed out and halted him, pressing hard enough into his chest for Grimmjow to feel the sharpness at the tips of Ulquiorra's bony fingers. _

"_Aizen-sama informed me that Inoue Orihime was to be returned to her room almost an hour ago, Grimmjow." _

_The fingers removed themselves from his chest an instant before Grimmjow moved to swat them away, and Ulquiorra hesitated for an instant before continuing. _

"_Did you...get lost?" _

_His voice, indecipherable as it always was, seemed to carry a faint note of incredulity, as though he couldn't envision such a thing happening to any of their number, even Grimmjow. Grimmjow responded to the complement by shouldering past him and setting off in what he hoped was the right direction. _

"_Fuck you," he said over his shoulder. It really wasn't enough. _

Not enough. He traced the line crossing out his eyes again, and then concentrated on the sense of her he'd had since she'd first arrived, latent possibility lying quiescent some distance away, taunting him.

_Trap. _

In the moment, he would have seized upon it regardless. Even now he was considering racing down to her quarters and taking his fill of her powers anyway, forcing her at sword point if she'd chosen to retract her offer.

Grimmjow hated internal conflict.

He walked out into the apparently morphing maze of corridors.

1

And then the world changed.

1

The Princess in the castle, hands clasped before her chest, looking out across the world she cannot access. A light breeze sweeps her hair away from her face as the bars on her window reflect in her eyes but she keeps her chin high as though this can reduce the severity of her imprisonment.

She is dressed in bridal white but the rising sun burns patterns of orange on the fabric and it darkens to wine red in places. Her crown, too, burns with solar majesty though she has neglected to provide tears to shine in this unveiling of light.

In fact, though the picture might have come straight from one of Orihime's illustrated books of fairytales, the Princess's primary expression is one of astonishment as she looks upon the green paradise which rolls out from the battlements of her castle. Although she winces and pokes at her crown occasionally, she does not remove it even though it's starting to give her a headache, nor does she look away from her new view. Her feet are bare on the cold stone of the floor and as this comes to her attention she raises one and attempts to rub it, but instead loses it among the wealth of skirts she has acquired overnight and almost falls over. Having cracked her head against the inset of the window as she slipped, she maintains equilibrium by wedging herself in that position until she can untangle her leg.

Turning around, she decides it's probably a good thing that the blue haired man who has just pushed her door open didn't see any of that. Nonetheless, his sudden presence is almost – but not quite – reassuring in its familiarity.

He's no longer in the clothes he had worn when she had known him as an Espada; instead his semi-medieval attire is moulded to suit the strange fantasy world which seems to have overtaken them. The hair is not as incongruous as it probably should be. The attempt at an expression of patience is stranger. But he is at least recognisably Grimmjow, as nothing else here is recognisable as anything she has tangibly encountered.

"Is this...a dream?" Orihime asks, faltering a little as she looks around at her fairytale setting and at him, no prince charming. He grins hugely.

"This is time to wake up, Princess."

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AN: we finally arrive at the plot! And I can stop making heavy handed references to dreaming at the start of every chapter.

I am so sorry for being so incredibly late with this, guys. I really have no excuse except generic suckiness. But it's here now, and hopefully the next chapter won't take as long to get out. No promises tho'. Also, the amount of time since my last update means that I have less of a concrete handle of where I'm going, but I really hope this will be starting to make sense soon. It should be evident now what is happening, even if it's not clear why, although what I think is evident in these cases often turns out to be completely foggy to everyone else :) Feedback should help me know what I'm doing, and next chapter will clarify things a little. I may also go back at some point and adjust previous chapters until I'm happy with them, but I don't think anything too substantial will be changed.

I'm also sorry for the cliffhanger which didn't go anywhere, but not very. XD


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